


Tempest After Sun

by SirJosephBanksFRS



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 08:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJosephBanksFRS/pseuds/SirJosephBanksFRS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack’s rendezvous with Diana in Dover comes to an abrupt end on the night that he later falls out with Stephen on the <i>Polychrest</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tempest After Sun

Jack Aubrey rolled over and settled on his back onto the spotless sateen sheets of Diana Villiers' bed, blinking hard to fight his postcoital torpor. There was no usual tray of coffee standing by to shake his sleepiness, for this had been a spur of the moment rendezvous. The few servants were out and Diana had seemed none too pleased to find him at her door but had welcomed him in, however tepidly. Things had progressed as usual. Jack thought he would make it back to the _Polychrest_ well before eleven p.m.; all things considered very well done, he thought, given he had arrived at her door at nine thirty p.m. sharp. He would make his tide and Bonden would have gotten back to the barge by the time Jack would reach the quay. They would not have such a hard time of it getting back to the ship as they had coming in. Harte's words were still fresh in his ears and he meant to take as little time away from the ship as he might, though he salved his conscience that this diversion was on the heels of making his report and therefore was not truly a complete dereliction of his duty.

Diana sighed and pulled the sheet up around her, under her bare arms.

"Aubrey, when Maturin gets back from Ireland, you really should give him leave to go to Mapes and make Aunt Williams an offer." The blood was only very slowly returning to his head and he felt slow and stupid.

"What do you mean?" he said, frowning.

"To ask for Sophie's hand, of course. This is the perfect time. Why, they could be married in a fortnight. True, he has nothing to speak of, but Aunt Williams is fond enough of him and the prospect of her own personal medical man to attend her hysteria and vapours at all hours of the day and night for the rest of her life would tip the scales in his favour on the dowry issue. Then, too, she would be freed up to make far better matches for Frankie and Cissy without the millstone of Sophie unmarried hanging around her neck. Lord knows Sophie would not care that Maturin does not have two pennies to rub together. She would be happy with nothing. She is very fond of him and she would be the perfect doting little wife, even if she does tower over him. She does not care about that either -- not how short he is, nor how ugly nor his misbegotten birth nor his nationality nor that he's a Papist. She never disdains him no matter how shabbily and poorly turned out he is and she will cheerfully listen to him prate on about birds all day long -- two great virtues in a wife for him. The fact that he has nothing and probably never will have anything would not bother her in the least and she is getting into the old maid line now," Diana said, stretching sinuously. "She wants babies and half of her ten thousand would quite tidily set him up. It needn't be love in a cottage. Why, she could have a baby post haste, by year's end and she would take very good care of Maturin, far better care of him than you do now. She could buy him a practice somewhere and then you would be considerably freed up, assuming you and Maturin could ever tear yourselves apart from each other. They are perfectly suited to one another, do you not agree? What are you at, Aubrey?"

Because his back was to her, Diana could not see that Jack's face had gone from its usual almost cherubic pink to chalk white. He had sat up and was quickly putting on his clothes. Diana's questions were apparently rhetorical because she went on without waiting to receive an answer.

"Stephen is extremely fond of her. He can listen patiently to her silly prattle for hours. It does not seem to bother him in the least that she is such an ignorant little ninny -- he will defend her simplicity at every turn. He would be completely devoted to her however unfashionable she might be -- of course, objectively, she is much too good for him; but on the other hand, she is a provincial, ignorant girl past the blush of youth, past the peak of her eligibility, now, at this point, getting older with every day and he is very kind. He would make her a good enough husband and it has to be better than spending the next thirty years penned up alone with Aunt Williams, being ordered about by her day and night. It is not like she has any other great prospects and Lord knows he will never do any better and conceivably, far, far worse, if indeed anyone will have him." She looked up at him. "My God, Aubrey, you dressed so fast that one would think the house was afire."

"I must go," he said coldly. He had dressed almost completely and left the bed and picked his hat and coat up off the chair where he had laid them. He put on his coat and took his hat under his arm.

"Evidently," Diana said, curtly. "You will never be accused of losing a minute ever in any situation, no matter how gauche or ill-considered it is, Aubrey, that is for certain. I am convinced you naval men find it a great virtue, but we mere civilians do not." She yawned. "Might you let yourself out? Be so good as to hand me that towel." He picked it up and placed it in her reach and went to the doorway. "Adieu then, Aubrey," she said.

"Good-bye, Diana," he said brusquely and he bowed stiffly to her and left, closing her bedroom door behind him.

 

Tears smarted in his eyes as he strode away from New Place, walking so quickly that the few people out on the street looked up at him in surprise. He would never darken her door again, he vowed, never ever again. It was not the first time Diana had said to him that Stephen should marry Sophie, but she had never before articulated her reckoning of the two of them, his particular friend and his would be sweetheart -- how very little she apparently esteemed either of them and her words had sickened him.

What exactly was she trying to say? Was this soliloquy Diana’s jealousy and possessiveness of Jack Aubrey, unlikely as it seemed, talking: that Jack should view Sophia Williams as unworthy of him, as marital dregs to be left for Stephen who was of little or no account in Diana's mind? Sophie, who was completely unblemished in her reputation; Sophie, whom Jack thought actually more beautiful if much less dashing, spirited and passionate than her raven-haired cousin, far sweeter, and (he shuddered at realizing the extent to which he agreed with Mrs Williams about anything) certainly capable of making an extremely handsome match with any of the more eligible bachelors in London. Not a brilliant match, perhaps, but a very, very handsome one, in any case. And Diana repeated over and over that Sophie would be happy with nothing, with Stephen, for Stephen was worth, in her estimation apparently, nothing or next to nothing. There was nothing that Diana had ever said in the entire time he had known her that had ever made him angrier.

Realizing that denigrating Sophie as being an appropriate wife for Stephen because of Stephen's intrinsic worthlessness was apparently her meaning, Jack went through a whole gamut of emotions -- anger at Diana, disgust with Diana, sadness for Stephen, whom Jack strongly suspected was smitten with her and most of all, violent anger and disgust with himself for ever having given Diana Villiers the time of day, for ever having thought that her pretty face and person were worth ignoring what was apparently a state of complete heartlessness and a type of profound debilitating blindness as to the worth of anything that could not be converted into pounds sterling.

A pang hit him with the thought that had Diana said any of this before they had retired to her bedroom, his reaction might have been very different; that he would have not taken such great, if indeed any umbrage at her words, intent as he was on being agreeable to her that she might be agreeable once more with him and this thought filled him with shame. "God's my life," he thought miserably, "that is what comes of thinking with my goddamned prick." Everything with women always seemed so reasonable until the act was over and then the blood went back to his head and he would occasionally find himself in situations that alarmed or disgusted him."It is not quite the thing," Jack thought, but that was the problem; it was exactly the thing. He was no stranger to postcoital tristesse. He longed to ask Stephen about it, but for the time being, that would be quite impossible.

He was so down in the mouth over the current situation with Sophie that he bit his lip to stop the tears that welled up in his eyes. What a cock he'd made of his life --having barely a shilling to his name, being forced to take command of this wretched, loathsome "Carpenter's Mistake"  to avoid being arrested for debt, not being able to make any kind of an honourable offer of marriage to Sophie, not even being able to be on land without skulking around at night to avoid arrest. Suddenly, he was overwhelmed by the desire to be in the cabin, such as it was, having a glass or two of wine by way of drowning his sorrows.

Stephen had been away in Ireland for three months. It was only now apparent to Jack the degree to which Dr Maturin's presence made life bearable for him on the cursed _Polychrest_. He was due back at any time. Jack was with child to see him, as he had obtained a perfect narwhal tooth in the Baltic as a gift for his particular natural philosopher.

Jack and Bonden sailed back in silence to the larboard side of the _Polychrest_ and Jack went aboard, resolving that he would not be calling on Diana Villiers in Dover again. He went to the cabin and poured himself a large glass of claret left from the decanter Killick had brought for him and looked up smiling when he heard Stephen's voice.


End file.
